


Anabasis

by shinychimera, Yeomanrand



Category: Doom (2005)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, Family, Gen, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A what-came-next story: how do Reaper and his sister Sam react to their ordeal with the terrible mutated monsters at Olduvai? And how can they possibly decide what to do next?</p><p><i>Anabasis: 1) A military march up-country, to the interior. 2) An ascent from the underworld. 3) Ascent, lifting, as of rising spirits or tempo.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Anabasis

**Author's Note:**

> For the [smallfandomfest](http://community.livejournal.com/smallfandomfest/) 08 prompt: Reaper and Sam, Surviving

Sam expects to awaken to the beeping of hospital monitors, if not the whispering pressure of an oxygen mask on her face, but instead she hears birdsong and the soft chirruping of frogs. The warm air on her face smells of woodsmoke and verdant things rather than antiseptic and air conditioning.

Puzzled, she starts to roll onto her side, but a firm warm hand presses on her shoulder the moment she shifts.

"Don't, Sam. Better to lie still for a bit."

"John?" she rasps, and blinks enough to make the golden-brown blur resolve into a simple paneled wall, directly across from the bed. John moves into her field of vision, sidelit by some bright lamp behind her head, a worried crease between his brows. And—

"Ow," she says, because it hurts to laugh, but her brother just looks so _ridiculous_ with his hair bleached blond over a tanned face.

"I take it you're feeling better," he says, familiar sarcasm dripping off his clipped vowels. Being together for less than a day — after almost ten years of near-silence — should have reinforced how distant they'd become, not brought them closer together.

But then, the last twenty-four hours Sam can remember were possibly the strangest and most horrible hours of her life. Her hoarse laughter cuts off and her eyes widen; John lets go of her shoulder and puts a straw to her lips.

"Drink," he orders, and she obeys, because he's her twin and they take care of each other, because nourishment is the obvious and logical and _scientific_ thing to do for her injured body — and because the animal part of her is shrinking away from her returning memories. She stares into his eyes while the vaguely orange-flavored electrolyte cocktail enters her parched system; she knows better but she still swears she can feel it flowing down her gullet into her stomach.

John nods at her. "You've been in and out of consciousness for the better part of a week."

She takes in the flat statement, still sucking greedily at the liquid. He's studying her too closely.

"You should have gotten your eyebrows, too," she finally says, fishing for sisterly snark. Not that he'd look any less ridiculous if he had.

He grunts with a little shrug, setting the empty cup aside. This time he doesn't stop her from trying to sit up, though his hand lingers near her arm while she's moving. The room is almost featureless: wood floor, windowless and undecorated walls, bare rafters over the bed and a light behind it, a chair, a pot-bellied iron stove, and a short but overstuffed bookcase with John's gleaming military rifle laid across the top.

"Where are we?"

"Hunter's cabin. Still in Nevada, but a long way north from Vegas." He settles into the chair near the bed, angled in a way that tells her he's been sitting there all week, where he can watch her _and_ the door. He's dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved button-down shirt; she can just see where his tan ends below the edge of his sleeve, and the scientist in her briefly wonders if his melanin works better with the C24 in his system. But of course he's always tanned easily, even when they were young.

He arcs an eyebrow at her; it's Sam's turn to shrug. They've known each other since the womb; she's sure if he can't guess exactly what she's thinking, he'll at least be on the same track.

"The Ark Facility?"

He shakes his head, hazel eyes nearly black under the shadows of his heavy brows.

"What did they do, nuke it from orbit?" John looks down, acknowledging that the truth is _something_ of that magnitude, and she's horrified, trying not to think of all the people who had already died there, her colleagues, her friends and their _children_... her hand comes up to cover her mouth. She searches John's face, looking for something, anything to reassure her, but all she sees there is a grim and weary acceptance of reality.

"What... Why..." she starts, but there are too many questions, and they're all too big. She closes her eyes, sees a monster dragging Duke down through the air vent, blood bubbling up from his lips. Her breath comes too quickly through her nose, over the hand trying to clamp down on lips and emotions both.

"Because shit happens, Sam," John answers, dully; she doubts he believes himself. "It's just like the rockslide, doesn't have anything to do with us other than we had the misfortune to be there."

 _No,_ they _had the misfortune to be there. Our parents. My friends. And his too. And dozens of innocent bystanders. All dying horrible, horrible deaths — or, like Goat, living long enough to realize they were going to change into...something else._

 _And we get to live? We get to walk away from Hell, not once, but twice?_

"Dumb _luck_?"

"Bad luck we were there," he says, pushing back up out of the chair to pace around the small wood-paneled room. "Good luck we got out. Luck, and quick thinking on your part."

She carefully swings her legs over the side of the bed, and he's right there, again. He's not just hovering from brotherly solicitousness, she realizes; he's there with a hand on her arm because he can be, as quick as thought, because of the changes C24 wrought in his system.

The changes _she_ wrought, to enable him to fight off the monsters their friends had become.

 _And what has_ he _become?_

"John, I —" she says, but he cuts her off with a snarl.

"Don't."

 _He became what you forced him to become, to clean up after the company's mess. Because he was your best chance to survive. Because you couldn't lose him again. And he might never forgive you._

She looks up at him, searching his eyes for anger or blame, and sees only a mirror of her own fright and frustration. Her throat tightens, watching him back away from her; John doesn't know what he is either, or whether he should have died with the rest, in whatever crater is left of the goddamned Ark Facility...

 _But it could have been so much worse!_

"Either you're about to tell me again that you didn't know about the C24 experiment, or you're about to apologize. Either way, _don't_ ," he bites out. "You did what you had to do, Sam, to clean up my mess."

" _Your_ mess?" She's shocked enough to rise to her unsteady feet, reaches out to smack him as hard as she can in the chest — something he's been immune to since they were about twelve, she thinks furiously, long before C24 or even the Marines. " _You_ weren't up there doing research into Lucy and her kin. _You_ didn't inject a mass murderer with a substance that needed far more study — a substance that _at minimum_ was going to increase his strength and speed. I don't have the faintest _idea_ what Carmack was thinking."

John snorts angrily.

"We both know what Carmack and the corporation were thinking," he barks. "While you archaeologists were drooling over Lucy's remains, they were thinking what a hell of a _weapon_ someone like her would have been!"

 _What a hell of a weapon someone like_ me _would be_.

His meaning echoes clearly enough, even if his words hardly do in the tiny room that traps them both. She sinks back down on the bed in the face of his misery; he paces away until he's standing near the door, leans his forearm on the jamb. She doesn't need to see his face to know he's closed his eyes. Like their mother when she was frustrated, John's resting his forehead on his fist, his thumb pressed between his brows.

The uncomfortable silence grows, and she watches him grapple — watches _herself_ grapple — with the guilt and the fear and the tangled complications of their future. Every idea that starts to make sense of what _she's_ been through doesn't make sense for _him_ but she doesn't care what he thinks. The gulf between them is no wider now than it's ever been.

She can only think of one answer that fits for both of them: _It could have been worse. It_ should _have been worse. And there isn't any point in wondering whether we got what we deserve, or deserve what we got. Just like the first time, just like we always have, we need to figure out what we can do with what we have left._

The chaos settles just a little, in her head, but it's still roiling around him in almost tangible waves. She's searching for the right words to reach through it when John clears his throat, turns his head until she can see a sliver of his profile, and fractures her reality a little more.

"I'm sorry," he says.

She takes a deep breath before she speaks.

"You're right. They wanted a weapon. I created one. But you _survived_. And so did I. And because we did, those monstrosities aren't out there ravaging the Strip right now. I can't regret that."

He turns to look at her more fully, leaning back against the door and folding his arms across his chest, almost hiding the grim reaper tattoo that clings to his skin, red as blood. She doesn't know if it will help; if saving _almost_ everyone now will make it any easier to be a survivor than not being able to save _anyone_ did when they were nine. But she needs him, and he needs her, and they both need to be needed.

And they need a goal and a plan.

"I guess the question is," she continues, with a little more snap in her tone, "what do we do now?"

"Run, when you're recovered enough, and then run some more," he says, the bitterness audibly thick in his mouth.

"Don't be stupid," she snaps. He's had a week longer to think about this than she has, and that's what he's come up with? "You've been a lot of things, John, but cowardly has never been one of them."

"It's not cowardice — it's sense. I didn't get back to the Ark Facility in time to steal or erase the surveillance tapes, Sam — that's why you're _here_ with a half-trained field medic and not in a hospital where you can get proper care! We have to assume the company saw what I can do, what I did to Sarge. And that they know we made it out. They know now that C24 _works_ , somehow, some of the time, and they're not going to stop coming after us until they can dissect me to figure it out. And even if we _do_ manage to —" and his voice hitches in a way that makes her _really_ angry because she always _does_ know what he's thinking, dammit, "evade them somehow, you know as well as I do they're going to find a way to get back to Mars and salvage anything they can."

"Finished?" There's just as much venom in her voice as his.

"No," he growls. "If UAC lets slip that I'm not dead, we'll have the Marines hunting us down as well."

"And you're too afraid of what's going to happen if either group catches up to us to consider other options?"

" _What_ other options? Jesus Christ, UAC gets hold of C24 again, and rampaging mutants spitting their tongues at tourists on the Las Vegas Strip will be the _least_ of our worries."

A shudder of adrenaline races through her system at the thought, images of Earth in ruins like Mars. She understands, in full brutal sympathy, his urge to go to ground somewhere, not to risk becoming Ground Zero, or Patient Zero — or the last of his kind.

But to her mind, going into hiding means giving up — and the ones who didn't make it out of Olduvai alive deserve _better_ than that. She and John deserve better.

"And we don't know that I'm not going to go the same way, either."

" _No_. You're not a monster, John. This stuff only turns you into what you already are, on the inside."

"Sarge didn't turn into one of those...things right away, either. You think I'm a hero? Some kind of saint? I'm just a guy, Sam — there's enough fucked-up shit in my head to —"

"John! Shut _up_."

He glares at her.

"Lucy and her people weren't wolves in sheep's clothing, okay? They were ordinary people with these extraordinary powers, and they had civilization and science and _babies_ , all right? They may have messed with science too powerful to control, and they may have created the wolves that killed them, but they didn't _become_ those wolves.

"You _are_ just a guy. But you were a guy with 20/15 vision and a really big gun before, and you weren't a monster then. You're not going to do any worse with a few extra superpowers."

He rolls his eyes, still frustrated and scared.

"This isn't a comic book. It's not a video game." He hesitates. "And Sarge was the one with the big fuckin' gun, not me."

Sam shakes her head, laughing just a little, and he dips his chin like a high school freshman who knows he shouldn't be joking around. She reaches her hand out to his cheek. He _misses_ Sarge, she realizes suddenly, misses having someone else in charge, someone he can trust.

John clears his throat again. "Sarge told me not to come with 'em, you know. A 'recommendation,' not an order."

"He did?"

"Because it was Olduvai. Because he knew — well, he knew enough."

"Then why did you go?"

"They were my _team_ , Sam." He shakes his head. "I might not have _liked_ all of them, but I couldn't leave them to go into the unknown a man down, either."

"So you did the right thing."

He pulls back from her in exasperation, throws his hands in the air. He pivots on his heel but the room is too small for him: there's nowhere to go.

She sighs, slipping off the bed and taking the two shaky steps she needs to be near enough to reach for the handle on the door. He's there, instantly, bristling and focused in a way that makes her stomach tighten, but she watches his face, seeing embarrassment soften his protective instincts a little. Still, she lets him opens the door first, and waits until he tells her it's clear before she comes out to join him on the crude porch.

The view is anything but crude. The air is frosty cold, even in the late afternoon sun, and she instinctively tucks her fingers in her armpits, but her attention is riveted by the gorgeous wilderness that surrounds them. The cabin's perched on a gray-green mountain meadow with pine forest spread below them; in the near distance she can see the glimmer of a blue lake.

John leans against the railing, eyes automatically scanning their surroundings and the sky, but she doubts he can see the beauty around them; he's far too accustomed to watching the shadows instead of the sunlight.

Sam breathes deeply, the clean air and open skies helping to chase away her claustrophobic fear. She takes a few steps forward, leans against the heavy post that supports the porch roof.

"We're going to be okay, John."

"How d'you figure?"

She shrugs. "We just will. You're right: we're going to need to lie low for a while -- certainly until I finish healing up. And then I expect we'll want to stay on the move. I'll trust you to take care of us, keep me from making stupid mistakes."

His eyes narrow, as if he thinks she might be making fun of him. But his chin lifts a little higher, too, pulling his spine up straighter. The breeze runs chill fingers through his ridiculous blond hair.

"And we'll need new identities, and money. If we can get me a computer and some good encryption, I think I can start taking care of that."

His eyebrow lifts over startled-wide eyes.

"I'm not a saint either, John." She smiles, hugging her arms closer around her aching ribs. "And knowing something _can_ be done is sometimes all you need to set things in motion."

"Then what?" He slips around behind her, shielding her from the chill; he gives off more body heat than she remembers.

"Once we've gotten ourselves a more secure setup, we start investigating UAC. Find out who the players are, what they know, what they're planning. Between your superpowers and mine," she grins, "I think we can learn a hell of a lot about them before they ever suspect they're being spied on."

"It's still two against..."

She shakes her head. "Doesn't matter. We've got time and the patience to find their weak spots."

They're silent again for a few minutes; he rubs warmth back into her upper arms.

"You're not dressed for this. We should go back inside."

But John's hands come to rest on her shoulders, and neither of them move, their attention held by the luminous clouds above the deep silhouette of the mountain.

She sets her hand on top of his and squeezes, gently. They're still alive, and they're a family again, and for now, she realizes, that's enough to give them the hope they need to carry on.


End file.
